Camouflage passport

A camouflage passport is a passport issued in the name of a non-existent country that is intended to look like a real country’s passport. To minimize potential legal implications that the distribution of these fake documents may entail, camouflage passports are officially marketed as a "protection for security-conscious international travelers" and usually made and sold by various individuals via the internet or mail order. These documents are also often sought by persons wishing to conceal their identity, misrepresent themselves or to commit fraud.

The passport's distributors claim that the "camouflage passport is designed to look realistic enough to allow a person to conceal his nationality in event of a hijacking, riot or some similar situation where his identity may single him out as a crime victim". Such passports are also often sold with several matching documents, including an international driver’s license and similar supporting identity papers.

Camouflage passports are generally issued in names of countries that no longer exist or have changed their name. Others use the names of places or political subdivisions that exist within a real country, but that have never issued and cannot issue passports. Still others are issued in the names of wholly fictitious countries but that typically have a plausible or familiar ring to their names.

Distinguished from “fantasy passports”

While sometimes carelessly referred to as “fantasy passports”, camouflage passports differ from fantasy passports in several ways. Camouflage passports are intended for use as a practical security tool, while fantasy passports are intended as novelties or, ostensibly, to denote membership in the issuing entity. Camouflage passports are sold by businesses who sell passports in the names of many non-countries, none of whom they claim to represent, while fantasy passports are sold by an entity that is issuing a passport in their own name. Lastly, camouflage passports are calculated to seem like they come from a real state of the usual, recognized type. The identity of that state is immaterial as long as it is assumed to be real by a person to whom the passport is lawfully exhibited. Fantasy passports also are “official looking”, but this is only to enhance the credibility of the issuing entity and bolster the holder’s own sense of membership therein. Of course, a camouflage passport might be used as a novelty, while a fantasy passport might be used as camouflage, there is, accordingly, some overlap.

Fantasy passports are usually issued both by and in the name of certain state-like or pseudo-state entities. These include putative micronations, non-territorial states or principalities, pseudo-states, etc. Interest in these passports generally turns on their novelty appeal. Souvenir state passports, manufactured by United Passports, are a good example of fantasy passports. Although these passports do look very similar to actual US passports (in color and size) they are clearly marked and distributed as novelties, to avoid confusion.

Examples include:

• Dukedom of New Sealand passports (not Sealand, the principality housed in Roughs Tower, but apparently an Antarctic iceberg)
• NSK (Neue Slovenische Kunst) passports issued by the non-territorial Slovenian art collective championed by the rock band Laibach
• World Service Authority (WSA) passports, which are apparently honored by at least a few countries. (See World Passport.)
• Conch Republic, a micronation declared as a tongue-in-cheek protest secession of the city of Key West, Florida from the USA in 1982.[1]
• Lalaland Passport, a practical joke fantasy passport.

On the other hand, both camouflage and fantasy passports are wholly different from second passports where a person, typically with dual citizenship, is issued two legitimate passports by different countries.

Legality of camouflage passports

The passports' manufacturers claim that the camouflage passports cannot be regarded as counterfeit passports because they are not purporting to be documents that are internationally recognized. This is however highly questionable as the passports pose as documents of former (but real) countries, and in some cases documents issued by these countries before their dissolution are still valid. Furthermore, the majority of the countries did not simply vanish. Instead they have transformed into different legal units or entities who have taken over their administrative authorities, including passport issuance.

The passport distributors claim that the passports "are not forgeries of actual documents, since legitimate passports from those entities do not exist". While the entities may not exist now, they did in the past, which is what makes camouflage passports forgeries of invalid though nevertheless actual, real-world, official documents.

The distributors of these documents claim that "possession and travel with a camouflage passport in the name of a non-existent country is not illegal in most countries, including the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom although the holder of such a document is unlikely to be allowed to use them to enter the country". This is only true to the extent that in the above countries a person is unlikely to be tried in court for carrying a camouflage passport in their luggage . However, presenting yourself with such a passport to any governmental official would constitute a serious criminal offense in a majority of countries, including those listed above. Furthermore, if a camouflage passport is found in one's luggage during a routine baggage check, one may be refused entry into the country, should the discovery of the camouflage passport make one appear suspicious, and thus undesirable, in the eyes of the official.

Whether a simple possession of a camouflage passport is illegal in countries other than those listed above depends on the legal specifics of the individual country, it is however likely that authorities in any country will not look too kindly on a discovery of fake identification documents.

Effectiveness

The effectiveness of a camouflage passports to serve the purpose for which they are officially intended—to fool hijackers or terrorists as to the holder's nationality—is quite questionable. A camouflage passport is not likely to contain any visas or stamps, which makes it look rather unrealistic if not fake at first sight. Alternatively the passport may contain fake stamps of other fake countries, which would however further diminish its realistic appearance to an almost cartoonish level. Or, it may contain fake stamps of real countries, which would however make it an outright forgery, a simple possession of which would be a criminal act.

There is no known or verifiable record of an event where a camouflage passport has ever actually saved its holder's life under the circumstances described.

External links

• Isle of Man's Financial Supervision Commission: Camouflage and Fantasy Passports